1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk reproducing apparatus which can contain therein a plurality of information recording disks in an array and successively play back those recording disks, and more particularly to a disk reproducing apparatus for motor vehicles which is installed in a dashboard of the motor vehicle.
2. Description of Related Art
Disk players of a type that contains therein a plurality of disks in an array and can reproduce a desired disk among the disks housed are known. One such disk player uses a magazine or the like for housing disks, provided separately from a main unit of the player and, for example installed in a trunk space of a car.
In this type of disk player, a main unit of the disk player is installed in a dashboard of a car and is linked by wires to a magazine which is in the trunk space. In this case, playback of a disk or other similar operations can be performed through an operation panel provided on a front face of the main unit of the player. However, when it is desired to change a disk with another one, it is required at first to open a trunk lid and take out the magazine mounted at the back of a side face or a floor face of the trunk space and subsequently to change the disk with another one.
There also is known a type of disk player in which a magazine can freely be set or removed into or from a main unit of a disk player mounted in a dashboard of a motor vehicle.
In this type of disk player, a magazine projects frontwards from a main unit of the disk player when replacing a disk with another one, so that it is necessary to select a position sufficiently away from a gear shift knob or the like of the car when installing the main unit of the disk player. Thus, the selection of the installation position of the player's main unit is subjected to some restrictions.
Also among disk players of the type that uses this detachable type of magazine, there is a type of disk player in which a magazine set in a main unit of the player is split into two pieces in the vertical direction to select a desired disk to be reproduced, and a reproducing device including a pickup or the like is removed into a space formed between the separated pieces (reference is directed, for example, to Japanese Patent Kokai No. 235249/1991). However, the mechanism for separating magazines and selecting a disk employed herein uses a plurality of swinging arms or the like, which makes the construction rather complicated.